'Give us this day.' Give us this day and night.
Give us the bread, the sky. Give us the power
To bend and not be broken by your light.
.
And let us soothe and sway like the new flower
Which closes, opens to the night, the day,
Which stretches up and rides upon a power
.
More than its own, whose freedom is the play
Of light, for whom the earth and air are bread.
Give us the shorter night, the longer day.
.
In thirty years so many words were spread,
and miracles. An undefeated death
Has passed as Easter passed, but those words said
.
Finger our doubt and run along our breath.
Elizabeth Jennings.
This is a poem about prayer - you can ask what it 'means', but that would be to miss the struggle for faith that for Elizabeth Jennings is more important than unquestioning certainty. When I read this poem, recalling us to words long familiar, 'give us this day', I come to that second last line with its haunting phrase 'but those words said', and my own faith is again rooted. And rooted not in what I feel, but in what He said, He who went through that 'undefeated death', and whose words now touch my doubt and uncertainty, and whose words are formed by my own speaking, 'Give us this day'.
And stanzas 2 and 3 use the image of the flower that Jesus also used, the lilies of the field, whose dress sense makes a greater fashion statement than Solomon for all his designer robes. This is a poem about trust and uncertainty, words crafted to the shape of our longing. The Lord's Prayer gives us the words to ask for what we need to be given; the Lord gives the gift of asking the gifts we need. The Word makes articulate our words, prays our prayer, in us and for us.
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